All I Had Was Nothingness
Documentarian, writer, and journalist Claude Lanzmann would have turned 100 in 2026. Shoah continues to resonate with cinephiles and all attentive audiences seeking to understand the history of the twentieth century. In collaboration with researcher and author Rémy Besson, we are organizing this evening as a space for discussion and a rediscovery of the film Shoah.
Preceded by previously unseen excerpts from the film Shoah
Presented by Rémy Besson, film historian at the Université de Montréal
Claude Lanzmann spent 12 years creating Shoah, a groundbreaking film that redefined Holocaust representation. 40 years later, filmmaker Guillaume Ribot explores 220 hours of unreleased footage. Lanzmann’s quest to capture the reality of the Holocaust led him to interview victims, witnesses, and perpetrators from all over the world. Overcoming doubt, setbacks, and false leads, he embarked on an unparalleled journey culminating in a landmark masterpiece, now part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Only using Lanzmann’s own words drawn from his memoirs and never-before-seen excerpts, Guillaume Ribot pays homage to one of cinema’s masterpieces and to its director’s relentless pursuit of telling the untold.
Guillaume Ribot
Guillaume Ribot is a French filmmaker, photographer, and author. After studying photography and art history, dedicated himself to press photography. In 2009, he decided to direct his first documentary film, delving into his own family history. His grandmother had told him that she had hidden Jewish children during World War II. His research led him to the first of a series of films focused on Jewish history during World War II. In 2023, he directed Seeds of Hunger - Ukraine 1933, which retraces journalist Gareth Jones's journey and documents the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933. In 2025, he directed All I Had Was Nothingness, told entirely from the word of filmmaker Claude Lanzmann and never-seen-before footage from his masterpiece, Shoah.
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